Yes scarcity, as in limited supply, aka. deflationary coin. There is of course the way it works, how it runs code and not just obey the whims of an individual or a group of individuals that could change the rules at any point to fit their "needs". Node decentralization.

In short, the "no surprises" is an integral part of Bitcoin's value, along with limited supply. And of course, its technology that ensures its both safe and available; where there is no central authority that could be toppled to make it disappear.

Bitcoin complete is the sole reason it has the highest value in the market. Some people still don't get this, they cannot comprehend a non regulated coin is more valuable than a regulated one, precisely because there can never be surprises.

Your government can make you very poor overnight, as long as they wield the power to do so. Bitcoin takes that power away.

Hey, it was called Department of War not Defense, until 1947. To their defense (pun), they had a more honest nomenclature back then...

Of course they meddled even more in foreign affairs under the pretense of the cold war and "communist expansion", and by then it was already Department of Defense (against communism terrorism).

And they still did a lose job...

That's the norm here as well, they loved extorting miners because, unlike the typical drug traffickers, they were mostly unarmed "nerds" with "too much money for their own good". Indeed later the government did some regulation and ordered to stop the seizing of equipment, but the way things works here, it is not very reassuring unless you somehow have very good ties with someone in power.

Justice here is more about who you are friends/related to, and little about whatever the actions and the written law say.

There is a place where you are supposed to get a mining equipment import license, and exchanges are also supposed to register there and obey their rules, which of course the cops know nothing about, but if their superiors tells them to stop they do it (their superiors also get a portion of the spoils, so the unregistered people are "free game"). Doesn't necessarily mean you get spared if you are registered...

Another coin that the government can turn to dust overnight. Zimbabwe should have learned the lesson...

Hmmpf, they should learn from us, 1 bank note per person per day, the socialist way of redistribution of wealth: quotas and lines, LONG waiting lines, so many and so long, you won't have time to do anything else which fits perfectly with their system, as there won't be any full jobs worth doing anyway.

100$ per day at the ATM? Try 2$. That's the reality here. And guess what, the money only lasts about 15 minutes, the ATMs get refilled about twice a day. Your best hope is to do the line at the bank for your daily banknote. Of course, most transactions are done with debit card, physical money is only rarely used in things like the obsolete (private) public transport city services.

To me, the only reason any government has to issue a coin, is to manipulate it and do things like printing to fit their ill conceived budgets, rather than reduce expenses.

Rather than creating fiat currencies, they should be abolishing them and just adopt bitcoin. Otherwise they are planning something shady, that only ends with MORE poverty. Indeed if you start adopting Austrian school of economy ideas, first thing you do is abolish fractional reserve banking and CLOSE the central bank. This forces the ever corrupt politicians into more transparency, no garbage budgets anymore.

Well, lets just see how long they take to repeat history. One would think 40 centuries should be long enough for humans to learn, but alas...

Yes.
Online.
Yes, online.
Improve the help section of the wallet so new comers understand it.
Yes, in things like wire transfer or online payment.
Currency. You can always trade your currencies (ie. forex), but that is besides the point.


There are some issues regarding "instant" use in physical situations (the infamous pay for coffee use case), which is what LN is attempting to address. The success of this idea will largely depend on the wallets implementing it. But for most common uses, the way traditional bitcoin is, is quite good enough.

If it were me, i would default the wallets to 1 sat/B tx fees. And optionally add some button or setting in case the user rarely needs the transfer to process "fast" (and with RBF you can always do that after the initial broadcast, ie. later). If you honestly and seriously analyze your online transactions, most can easily wait a day or two. I know some traditional methods involving bank wire transfer can take longer than that and merchants usually wait until that is cleared before shipping. Compared to that Bitcoin is instant. And most of the time, 1 Sat/B transactions get confirmed within an hour or two... At some point they will allow 0.1 sat/B, when that comes i would switch wallets defaults to it.

I don't like the wallets that try to guess network traffic and pick a fee that would "probably" get confirmed within a block or three. Some at least give you the option to manually input your tx fee, which to me, should always be the smallest non zero value. Especially after LN comes in widespread use for the "instant coffee payment" scenario.

This is to debunk the myth that "Bitcoin transactions are too expensive", no they are not, you just didn't set the proper fee, silly. If you are tipping someone some satoshis, you DON'T want your wallet picking a fee for you...

According to US law, anything you make is immediately copyrighted. In the past, it was necessary to use the © (Copyright) symbol, but its not the case anymore. This is the very reason Lawrence Lessig came with a legal way to "Opt out" of this and that is Creative Commons.

I'm not sure who and where the bitcoin logo was made. The Symbol made it to unicode in 2017, so its just like another letter: ₿ (BTC).

The HKD is probably too good a coin for them to bother, but your comment is the best. If you have a family fortune, rather than bother with banks, move it all to bitcoin while keeping the spare minimum for the trip, and at destination only exchange what you really need for daily expenses.

Leaving is the wisest option, the central government isn't going to back out, protesters have no chance in China, just see the rest of the country*, this is where HK is headed and they can't stop it.

* Except in Taiwan, because there are Americans in the way.

January 2018? Talk about ancient...

SIM attacks are nothing new, it is but another attack vector. People should act smarter, but its quite the opposite. One tells them to stop using windows our put wallets in smartphones, and yet they keep doing it, until they get hit and blame it on Bitcoin, when in reality it was their attitude that prompted it.

Google dependency also didn't help, maybe if he just used another email provider...

I have been living (surviving) from what little bitcoin income i managed to obtain online for the last couple of years. Living with bitcoin is simple: You only spend what you must, and keep (hold/save) the rest. Since almost no one accepts bitcoin directly here (despite misleading news), this means exchanging it prior to going out to buy.

This is probably unsuitable for most people, unless you live in a "subsidized" environment such as with your family where you wouldn't need to pay for food or rent, or a country with a broken economy...

Ideally a "proper" job (hundreds, instead of tens of USD equivalent a month) with bitcoin payment would suffice, or fiat paid and you exchange all you can. Yes i know in rich countries you are supposed to earn thousands of USD/month to live, but lets ignore the rich...

Bitcoin is not consuming anything, it is the miners hoping to reap the last profits, while the whole mining ecosystems gradually becomes less and less profitable, which fixes "the problem" by itself (no intervention).

Furthermore not all mining is using energy from carbon emissions. Many farms are using hydroelectric power, which in some places is plenty and overabundant.

There is no need to "take responsibility", and no one can, its code running a program as intended, and its working beautifully even outside its scope of execution. Bitcoin doesn't care if many or few people mine it, humans do, because its profitable, and they will stop, when it isn't (soon). Then you'll end with a lot of unused electrical capacity, which will come handy for the next stage in electric vehicle use...

And, if/when humanity manages to conquer fusion nuclear generation, price of energy will drop so hard the economy will have to reshape itself (and may even bring bitcoin mining back to becoming profitable for a little while).

Anyway you shouldn't be thinking "intervene" and just wait it out. The market is solving the issue by itself. Besides, Bitcoin was designed so it can't be "intervened" so easily, those very miners and nodes have a say on the matter, for every tiny little change done to its code.

Obviously not true, "control" is the one thing they don't want losing, much less to indentured peasants... This is a talk like it was monero, most people seem to be unaware that with Monero your transactions are not anonymous unless you use a specific (cli only wallet) setting. If China adopted XMR then yes, it would be true. I don't think they cloned Monero, but even if they did they would have to release the code with their modifications for the community to verify it, as most likely such "anonymity" can't possibly include "The State". Which renders the whole thing useless in the first place.

Venezuela has yet to release the modifications done to Dash for Petro. It is an obligation by Venezuelan law, but they are ignoring it (laws are overrated here anyway, what the leader says its obeyed, period). Take Dash, change its name, run a couple of nodes in a single datacenter and, oh, make sure it has infinite supply, and you get an idea of what that coin is. Oh and no wallets, only a single online wallet.

One would think the Chinese would do better, and i think they probably will, but not in that regard. Anonymity is not something a police state needs, or is willing to concede giving. Back in my country, anonymity is forbidden (in the constitution, no less), imagine that... You'd think the Chinese have more freedoms in their "communist" constitution?

Right to Anonymity i think is even a constitutional right in America, but unconstitutional here. What is it in China?

Speaking of controlling anonymity, you can already do that with Bitcoin. Disclose your wallet address if you want. Maybe politicians should, or NGOs, or anyone that would want their wallets audited for whatever reason.

This is again the incomprehension of working with deflationary currency, it is the disease the Chicago school of economy has installed in most people brain's, so they can fear it and let "their model" "work.

Well no.

Deflationary money is money that doesn't lose value over time, therefore you don't need "a bank paying you interest". What you keep yourself, increases its purchasing power overtime, so you get an automatic incentive to NOT spend what you don't need (contrary to consumerism).

Once you DO decide to invest or spend, the money comes from a solid source. In the current dominant mentality, they'd rather you get in debt to buy as many things as you can, and then slave yourself paying it all back many times higher than if you had waited and saved to buy the thing.

One thing with deflation is you don't need banks as much, and banks should not be operating under fractional reserve, ie, fictional money that doesn't exist anywhere but is counted as it it where (90% of fiat money doesn't exist. maybe more, its a legalized ponzi scheme).

In the end, without the banks or the debt, you save your own money earned working, and trust that i will hold its purchasing value no matter what. And if you decide to spend it, you spend it and that's it. Austrian economists don't need fractional reserve, and therefore no central banks, and of course no fiat currency. They originally advocated for gold, but i think Bitcoin fits even better.

Fiat currency you want to get rid of it ASAP, as its constantly losing value. Bitcoin you keep as much as you can. and only use what you must.

You have such a machine, its called a telescope. Yes, indeed, whatever you see in the sky is already very. very old, much older than 10 thousand years. And the more you "zoom" in, the farther in the past you pry (not just further away).

Time and Space is relative. You think you could make things simple for you to understand it, but the universe does not care, it simply is.

Humans have this bad habit of destroying written history, from the old Chinese emperors, and the typical invasion armies, they can't simply stand seeing thousand years old stuff. Even modern Americans destroyed humanity's oldest writings when they ransacked and destroyed Baghdad's library "for lulz" (and some profit), just like the medievals, and the barbarians, or the romans of the past. It is a miracle "something" remains, as distorted as it may be, from impulsive selection, and several mistranslations (and even oral tradition).

What little remains is because it got buried before conflagration, such as Pompei, which unfortunately was uncovered and is quickly disappearing.

10 thousand years is nonsense. The Earth alone may be 20 million years old, of course most of its history it has been a barren lifeless planet incapable of sustaining life. Formation of this "Solar" system is estimated to be 4.5 billion years old, and where and when was this system formed?

Humanity existence is but a glimpse in the history of "this" universe. We could again ask the question of, where and when this universe got formed... And it doesn't matter what you believe in, those things won't be changing, at least not "here" on this "Universe".

Besides watching, there is also a proven method of time travel, you can travel to the future, but there is no returning. Simply travel to speeds close to the speed of light. Its already known and documented, Einstein's theory worked, as alien as it sounded.

Do you think reality starts with humans and ends with humans? Yours maybe (in your lifetime for that matter), but not the Universe's.

We know Earth is going to be destroyed about 2 billion years from now. I doubt there will be any "humans" left to witness it, either we would have evolved or most likely gone extinct. Dinosaurs lived on this planet, probably much longer than humans ever will. They lived around 200 MILLION years, where puny "humans" have barely been existing for 200 THOUSAND years at most, but you say its just 10, so i guess the other 190 thousand years they were too busy throwing sticks and stones at each other and living in caves etc. The nearest predecessor to humans took a couple of MILLION years to evolve into "human".

We don't know why things work the way they do in this plane existence, but they do.

10 thousand years of recorded history, but only because the Jews were more zealous to keep their oral tradition going, AND escaped being wiped by others. A sect from them ended funding Christianity, which in turn compiled (the parts they liked) into that book already coming from oral tradition from different languages than the ones used by whoever wrote them, and then again translated, and translated, and translated... and re-translated...

Did you ever stopped to ask what language that Moses actually spoke? If you want to get a bit closer, get to the source, the jews, don't be dismayed by the contradictions you may uncover. Remember this, the bible is not the source, its the copy, a really, really bad copy. Its valuable, but to a limited extent. Even the jew scripture is already altered, by their oral tradition since the times of Moses to the times of "Jesus", AND language changes (or do you think thousands of years would preserve the language intact?). And what language you think the contemporaries of Jesus were speaking? and their followers? Which was the official language (roman empire, remember?) Greek? Latin? Aremaic? a mixture? What about Hebrew?

Read this: If they made this giant mess with just THE name (everyone calling him Jesus is misnaming him) imagine what they did with the rest...

Have you ever tried reading the other books that were taken out from the bible, written by the same authors? Have you ever read Jesus "Lord's prayer" translated from Aramaic? You are in for a shock, given that Christianity is supposed to be based on it... But what's written (current) bibles, is VERY distorted. Jesus gave good teachings, and once you read a more faithful translation, you can understand how Christianity came to be. But the Christians that came after, well, history repeats.., just a century or two later whey were feuding over their founder coming in the flesh or in the spirit. That pissed the roman emperor, the "trinity" was born and that schism was solved...

What to do with the extreme crimes? Did you know my country has a theoretical maximum penalty of 30 years? You could pull out a terrorist attack killing thousands, and you would still get 30 years. I remember a case of a man who raped and killed a woman, he got the same sentence, but after 16 years he was released on "good conduct". First thing he tried to do was rape a prostitute (prostitution is not a crime here), back to prison for some months i guess...

I think there are cases where both forced labor and perhaps capital punishment is required. For the lesser crimes your ideas are not bad at all. We have absurd things like people getting years imprisoned over downloading some movie, that is ridiculous.

For those that get "life sentences" capital punishment could be considered. Rape could be dealt bible style with some good old fashioned castration, perhaps only for repeat offenders (or more than one victim without doubts).

I don't know if "penal colonies" could have some use in certain circumstances, for "medium" or "light" crimes. I know in some Nordic country they have what essentially looks like a resort, they are sent to some island and live kinda like that Prisoner sci-fi show (without the interrogations). On the opposite you get countries like mine where the prisons are so hellish, you either become super criminal in there or die, period. So get caught in a protest and your chance of coming out like a blood thirsty killer is high. And yeah, they throw everyone together in conditions that would be too extreme to tell here.

Perhaps some are suited for rural labor, tending a farm and things like that.

I don't know if people could truly rehab or not given different conditions, in the first place they should be separated from society to prevent them (physically) harming people, then comes the next part of what to do with them. Some things like tax evasion should not be putting people behind bars, that is plain stupid (same as copyright infringers).

So he was keeping the (discarded?) fetuses, but burning them would somehow make it better? Maybe its for the best that he kept them all, as a message reminding others. No one will never know how many abortions do occur in this world, as they are "erased" from people's mind.

This was a better registry than some cold numbers written in paper. In fact it would make for a nice decoration in the entrance of an abortion clinic, maybe that would change people's mind before going thru...

The State allows the procedure, it seems he just skipped some red tape and got suspended from that. 18 hours of mandated education? Hmmpf leave it to politicians to dumb out things...

There are countries that allow this, any practicing medic would technically be carrying an execution. What to do with the "remains?" is probably a legal loop hole he found and used. Taking it on him when the system allowed it in the first place is hypocrisy at best.

If you ban abortions, abortions will be performed at even shadier and more dangerous conditions, or with proper organized crime already selling the "product"...

True, they should have not gotten pregnant in the first place. But that education seems to need to start when they are 12 years old, and that in itself sparks another controversy. Don't teach them anything and things like this happen...

Sometimes i wonder if humans solving the captcha isn't more valuable to them than what few satoshis they give? Yes i am aware of services that pay humans to solve captchas, which defeats the whole point... I guess the whole captcha thing just increased spamming costs a bit.

Unfortunately i live in that country you mention... It makes for a hard choice when a full time job will net you 2¢ per hour (not a joke).

But yes, you can earn more doing some other things rather than faucets. I know people that try to do all they can with their internet, still better than the alternative... Try microtasks, or even ad clicking (again another model that feeds back itself...).

I wouldn't bother with "mining" websites, at all. The only good mining is asic mining, and maybe gpu mining for some altcoins, but thats about it. You can probably make more buying and holding, if you have spare money to invest that can be put aside for a long time.

It took them 13 MAJOR versions to add a dark theme? This is definitely not innovation, more like involution. Gates is not there Woz is not there, what remains? A brand? Inertia from their followers who can't look elsewhere?

And, several people report these updates just make their existing devices do less than if they kept their old versions, so yeah, its just bloat. I don't think this company has any hopes, its only a fashion brand thing in America, everybody else uses Android.

It is sad because with this wimp competition the likes of Google don't really try hard anymore either, they have no need to, no threats in sight...

Its not that hard once you learn how to control humidity. Hint: The exhaust of the miners...

Another way to ignore the humidity problem entirely is going with immersion, but that's a whole bag of expertise.

Ambient temp is overrated, i have seen it working with ambient 40°C, so 30°C ish or so is just fine. Its just a matter of moving air, and preferably filter it to reduce maintenance (or just do periodic scheduled cleaning maintenance, if your labor is cheap).

Well you can now have TV, movies, radio... computers, internet, and telecommuting in rural areas, its not like you have to live in the city, but i guess its a matter of choice. If you live in a city but manage to find a source of income that doesn't need constant physical presence, you can take the chance and move out.

The government is another matter.

The more the merrier. This is all in accordance to Elon Musk's plan to move humanity into electric cars. He did release his own electric motors for everyone, even Porsche, to use.

That said you have to take a look at how long it took Porsche to come out with something pure electric. The Model S is kinda old already, been out for 7 years already, it was meant as a Sedan type, nothing even remotely resembling a sports top of the line car (that's what the Roadster is for). The fact that even today the S can still compete with that new Porsche should tell you something about Tesla... Lets see if that Taycan can hold its flag 7 tears from now.

Yes i know Porsche, i like its classic sports car line, not its SUV line (i find those aesthetically horrible, actually).

Tesla has followed a top to bottom approach, from the most expensive speed cars to something cheap enough for the masses to commute "in style". It's still getting there, and i bet the bare bottom will be dominated by Chinese electric compacts anyway.

Perhaps then all the Tesla line will lower in price. An used Tesla S can be found sometimes cheaper than new model 3s.

I expect the other luxury sport car makers to chime in. A Ferrari with its signature whistle would be very nice, especially now that its quiet enough to hear it clearly.

Besides, Porsche did not send a car to Mars. That was an actual Tesla Roadster, the very thing that started it all...